My haul of Halloween skull stuff and a lot of screaming

It turns out that the second day after a dental operation sucks too. I am getting used to having a huge bandage in my mouth (mmmmmm……medicine tasty!) but it seems that when you have MSA, doing something like healing trauma throws the body into big time confusion and certain autonomic systems (like say...your heart!) go a bit haywire.

Yesterday I had these nice pink cheeks like I was on an Air Ireland advertisement. My whole chest was pink too. That’s because my systolic blood pressure was around 180 (this is BAD by the way, like, usually “go to the hospital because your organs are dying” kind of bad). Today the blood pressure went down but it seems the electrical current to the heart was off because I was having over 25% erratic heartbeats for several hours. Which just makes you super tired and really stupid (you say, “Huh?” a lot and stare into space); because oddly enough, it takes more energy to make something go wrong AND then fix the consequences than have it work right the first time. Weird how that principle applies in both our bodies AND in repairing cars, toilets and sociopaths.

I thought now that Halloween is well and truly gone for 2007 I should haul out MY bag of booty. Linda and I went around shopping because, I know this is going to amaze you, but stores actually put skull stuff ON SALE. Like death ever goes out of style? The first thing I got this pack of Pirate Bandages, which are just bandages with skull and crossbones (thank you Disney for teaching children that skulls and bones are fun!).

Since I get most of my bloodwork done at the Peds wing (childrens wing of the hospital), I usually get sparkly and My Little Pony band-aids (Truth!). But now I can bring my own skull and crossbones band-aids and make all the kids there envious of me.

I am kidding about making the kids envious; when I come for treatment they clear all the kids out of the department, something about that much screaming being too traumatic for them.

Then I got a got this awesome mug for when I get up in the evening. Skull with snake slithering around it, how could something like that not be in demand YEAR AROUND? Anyway, it is big enough for a mega hot chocolate or coke; the only downside is that I can’t let the home care people wash it. Why? Because I can’t replace it and I have noticed that home care people don’t get as anguished when THEY break your stuff as I DO when they break my stuff. In fact, just leaving stuff broken by the side of the kitchen for several days seems a common strategy so I won’t know who actually did the deed. So, Linda will have to wash it because I am too scared of dropping and breaking it to wash it (the hand twitching thing). Sorry Linda, you win by default! Still, cool mug.

Then, they were selling skull Kleenex. Wow! Halloween here is like Xmas, instead of getting the special Xmas cookies which put you in a sugar coma I get to blow my nose on skulls! How come I can only get this stuff once a year? This is definitely going in the backpack for when I need to do my “Oh don’t mind me and this spontaneous nosebleed....” If there is one thing I learned from Little House on the Prairies, The Waltons and other “Family” broadcasting is that if a character starts having spontaneous nosebleeds (usually with sad violin music), then that character was a goner! The character would try to cover it in rather pathetic 'plucky' attempts; while I on the other hand have skull kleenex, and I bet you wish you had some too – take that Laura Wilder!

Linda actually took one of the pirate band-aids so that when I woke up from this weeks needle/operation trauma (Dental surgery) I had this very cool band-aid already there. I’d like to say that made the whole thing worth it; but that would be a horrid, horrid lie. There were three screams: First was when they put in the needle (turns out the emla and oral sedative wasn’t enough), the second was the sensation of them PUSHING the IV tube into my vein. The final scream was when I felt the sedation push into my vein as she injected it into the IV tube. I couldn’t really talk later that day. Because it turns out, I don’t scream like a little girl, I scream like a fucking banshee coming to rip off your face. Something to do with more terror, pain and adrenaline than I knew what to do with. I will try to give the whole story in day or two for those with dental phobias so you can see how IV sedation without nitrous works out. I gave the experience a 4 out of 10 – it wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t fun but I survived it and I know I can do it again if I have to.

I did get outside today for 15 minutes. It was my first self mobility since Monday (they used transfer belt and board with me on Tuesday). Wow, the air is a lot heavier and harder to push through than it was last week. Why didn’t anyone send me the memo? Some woman (to be technical, a female senior citizen) grabbed my chair and “helped” me uphill against my protests. So how crap do I look? I would hope that things are going to be getting better from here (I would HATE to think they could get worse). Because the first draft of this post was “When the Hell am I going to feel better? I’m tired of feeling like crap!” But I decided to save up my long ranting post of “Why the **** is this all happening to me?” for another day (another month?). So, if I can hang in through November, you better be hanging in there with me, and yes, that is a threat (I am now that scary butch girl scout leader leading you on the wilderness hike…to where?).